Uncle Abner, Master of Mysteries Read online

  The Justice turned about. “Where do you go?” he asked.

  “Why, sir,” Abner answered, “this child is weeping at the sight of the dead man’s gloves, and I thought, perhaps, that old Benton might weep at them too, and in the softened mood return what he has stolen.”

  The Justice looked upon Abner as upon one gone mad.

  “And be sorry for his sins! And pluck out his eye and give it to you for a bauble! Why, Abner, where is your common sense. This thing would take a miracle of God.”

  My uncle was undisturbed.

  “Well,” he said, “come with me, Randolph, and help me to perform that miracle.”

  He went out into the hall, and up the wide old stairway, with the girl, in tears, upon his arm. And the Justice followed, like one who goes upon a patent and ridiculous fool’s errand.

  They came into an upper chamber, where a great bulk of a man sat in a padded chair looking down upon his avenue of trees. He looked with satisfaction. He turned his head about when the three came in and then his eyes widened in among the folds of fat.

  “Abner and Mr. Randolph and Miss Julia Clayborne!” he gurgled. “You come to do honor to the dead!”

  “No, Wolf,” replied my uncle, “we come to do justice to the living.”

  The room was big, and empty but for chairs and an open secretary of some English make. The pictures on the wall had been turned about as though from a lack of interest in the tenant. But there hung in a frame above the secretary—with its sheets of foolscap, its iron ink-pot and quill pens—a map in detail, and the written deed for the estate that these men had taken in their lawsuit. It was not the skill of any painter that gave pleasure to this mountain of a man; not fields or groves imagined or copied for their charm, but the fields and groves that he possessed and mastered. And he would be reminded at his ease of them and of no other.

  The old man’s eyelids fluttered an instant as with some indecision, then he replied, “It was kind to have this thought of me. I have been long neglected. A little justice of recognition, even now, does much to soften the sorrow at my brother’s death.” Randolph caught at his jaw to keep in the laughter. And the huge old man, his head crouched into his billowy shoulders, his little reptilian eye shining like a crum of glass, went on with his speech.

  “I am the greater moved,” he said, “because you have been aloof and distant with me. You, Abner, have not visited my house, nor you, Randolph, although you live at no great distance. It is not thus that one gentleman should treat another. And especially when I and my dead brother, Adam, were from distant parts and came among you without a friend to take us by the hand and bring us to your door.”

  He sighed and put the fingers of his hands together.

  “Ah, Abner,” he went on, “it was a cruel negligence, and one from which I and my brother Adam suffered. You, who have a hand and a word at every turning, can feel no longing for this human comfort. But to the stranger, alone, and without the land of his nativity, it is a bitter lack.”

  He indicated the chairs about him.

  “I beg you to be seated, gentlemen and Miss Clayborne. And overlook that I do not rise. I am shaken at Adam’s death.”

  Randolph remained planted on his feet, his face now under control. But Abner put the child into a chair and stood behind it, as though he were some close and masterful familiar.

  “Wolf,” he said, “I am glad that your heart is softened.”

  “My heart—softened!” cried the man. “Why, Abner, I have the tenderest heart of any of God’s creatures. I can not endure to kill a sparrow. My brother Adam was not like that. He would be for hunting the wild creatures to their death with firearms. But I took no pleasure in it.”

  “Well,” said Randolph, “the creatures of the air got their revenge of him. It was a foolish accident to die by.”

  “Randolph,” replied the man, “it was the very end and extreme of carelessness. To look into a fowling-piece, a finger on the hammer, a left hand holding the barrel half-way up, to see if it was empty. It was a foolish and simple habit of my brother, and one that I abhorred and begged him to forego, again and again, when I have seen him do it.

  “But he had no fear of any firearms, as though by use and habit he had got their spirit tamed—as trainers, I am told, grow careless of wild beasts, and jugglers of the fangs and poison of their reptiles. He was growing old and would forget if they were loaded.”

  He spoke to Randolph, but he looked at Julia Clayborne and Abner behind her chair.

  The girl sat straight and composed, in silence. The body of my uncle was to her a great protecting presence. He stood with his broad shoulders above her, his hands on the back of the chair, his face lifted. And he was big and dominant, as painters are accustomed to draw Michael in Satan’s wars.

  The pose held the old man’s eye, and he moved in his chair; then he went on, speaking to the girl.

  “It was kind of you, Abner, and you, Randolph, to come in to see me in my distress, but it was fine and noble in Miss Julia Clayborne. Men will understand the justice of the law and by what right it gives and takes. But a child will hardly understand that. It would be in nature for Miss Clayborne in her youth, to hold the issue of this lawsuit against me and my brother Adam, to feel that we had wronged her; had by some unfairness taken what her father bequeathed to her at his death, and always regarded as his own. A child would not see how the title had never vested, as our judges do. How possession is one thing, and the title in fee simple another and distinct. And so I am touched by this consideration.”

  Abner spoke then.

  “Wolf,” he said, “I am glad to find you in this mood, for now Randolph can write his deed, with consideration of love and affection, instead of the real one I came with.”

  The old man’s beady eye glimmered and slipped about.

  “I do not understand, Abner. What deed?”

  “The one Randolph came to write,” replied my uncle.

  “But, Abner,” interrupted the Justice, “I did not come to write a deed.” And he looked at my uncle in amazement.

  “Oh, yes,” returned Abner, “that is precisely what you came to do.”

  He indicated the open secretary with his hand.

  “And the grantor, as it happens, has got everything ready for you. Here are foolscap and quill pens and ink. And here, exhibited for your convenience, is a map of the lands with all the metes and bounds. And here,” he pointed to the wall, “in a frame, as though it were a work of art with charm, is the court’s deed. Sit down, Randolph, and write.” And such virtue is there in a dominant command, that the Justice sat down before the secretary and began to select a goose quill.

  Then he realized the absurdity of the direction and turned about.

  “What do you mean, Abner?” he cried.

  “I mean precisely what I say,” replied my uncle. “I want you to write a deed.”

  “But what sort of deed,” cried the astonished Justice, “and by what grantor, and to whom, and for what lands?”

  “You will draw a conveyance,” replied Abner, “in form, with covenants of general warranty for the manor and lands set out in the deed before you and given in the plat. The grantor will be Benton Wolf, esquire, and the grantee Julia Clayborne, infant, and mark you, Randolph, the consideration will be love and affection, with a dollar added for the form.”

  The old man was amazed. His head, bedded into his huge shoulders, swung about; his pudgy features worked; his expression and his manner changed; his reptilian eyes hardened; he puffed with his breath in gusts.

  “Not so fast, my fine gentleman!” he gurgled. “There will be no such deed.”

  “Go on, Randolph,” said my uncle, as though there had been no interruption, “let us get this business over.”

  “But, Abner,” returned the Justice, “it is fool work, the grantor will not sign.”

  “He will sign,” said my uncle, “when you have finished, and seal and acknowledge—go on!”

  “But, Abner,
Abner!” the amazed Justice protested.

  “Randolph,” cried my uncle, “will you write, and leave this thing to me?”

  And such authority was in the man to impose his will that the bewildered Justice spread out his sheet of foolscap, dipped his quill into the ink and began to draw the instrument, in form and of the parties, as my uncle said. And while he wrote, Abner turned back to the gross old man.

  “Wolf,” he said, “must I persuade you to sign the deed?”

  “Abner,” cried the man, “do you take me for a fool?” He had got his unwieldy body up and defiant in the chair.

  “I do not,” replied my uncle, “and therefore I think that you will sign.”

  The obese old man spat violently on the floor, his face a horror of great folds.

  “Sign!” he sputtered. “Fool, idiot, madman! Why should I sign away my lands?”

  “There are many reasons,” replied Abner calmly. “The property is not yours. You got it by a legal trick, the judge who heard you was bound by the technicalities of language. But you are old, Wolf, and the next Judge will go behind the record. He will be hard to face. He has expressed Himself on these affairs. ‘If the widow and the orphan cry to me, I will surely hear their cry.’ Sinister words, Wolf, for one who comes with a case like yours into the court of Final Equity.”

  “Abner,” cried the old man, “begone with your little sermons!”

  My uncle’s big fingers tightened on the back of the chair. “Then, Wolf,” he said, “if this thing does not move you, let me urge the esteem of men and this child’s sorrow, and our high regard.”

  The old man’s jaw chattered and he snapped his fingers. “I would not give that for the things you name,” he cried, and he set off a tiny measure on his index-finger with the thumb.

  “Why, sir, my whim, idle and ridiculous, is a greater power to move me than this drivel.”

  Abner did not move, but his voice took on depth and volume. “Wolf,” he said, “a whim is sometimes a great lever to move a man. Now, I am taken with a whim myself. I have a fancy, Wolf, that your brother Adam ought to go out of the world barehanded as he came into it.”

  The old man twisted his great head, as though he would get Abner wholly within the sweep of his reptilian eye. “What?” he gurgled. “What is that?”

  “Why, this,” replied my uncle. “I have a whim—‘idle and ridiculous,’ did you say, Wolf? Well, then, idle and ridiculous, if you like, that your brother ought not to be buried in his gloves.”

  Abner looked hard at the man and, although he did not move, the threat and menace of his presence seemed somehow to advance him. And the effect upon the huge old man was like some work of sorcery. The whole mountain of him began to quiver and the folds of his face seemed spread over with thin oil. He sat piled up in the chair and the oily sweat gathered and thickened on him. His jaw jerked and fell into a baggy gaping and the great expanse of him worked as with an ague.

  Finally, out of the pudgy, undulating mass, a voice issued, thin and shaken.

  “Abner,” it said, “has any other man this fancy?”

  “No,” replied my uncle, “but I hold it, Wolf, at your decision.”

  “And, Abner,” his thin voice trebled, “you will let my brother be buried as he is?”

  “If you sign!” said my uncle.

  The man reeked and grew wet in the terror on him, and one thought that his billowy body would never be again at peace. “Randolph,” he quavered, “bring me the deed.”

  Outside, the girl sobbed in Abner’s arms. She asked for no explanation. She wished to believe her fortune a miracle of God, forever—to the end of all things. But Randolph turned on my uncle when she was gone.

  “Abner! Abner!” he cried. “Why in the name of the Eternal Was the old creature so shaken at the gloves?”

  “Because he saw the hangman behind them,” replied my uncle “Did you notice how the rim of the dead man’s face was riddled by the bird-shot and the center of it clean? How could that happen, Randolph?”

  “It was a curious accident of gun-fire,” replied the Justice.

  “It was no accident at all,” said Abner. “That area of the man’s face is clean because it was protected. Because the dead man put up his hands to cover his face when he saw that his brother was about to shoot him.

  “The backs of old Adam’s hands, hidden by the gloves, will be riddled with bird-shot like the rim of his face.”

  Chapter 9

  The Tenth Commandment

  The afternoon sun was hot, and when the drove began to descend the long wooded hill we could hardly keep them out of the timber. We were bringing in our stock cattle. We had been on the road since daybreak and the cattle were tired. Abner was behind the drove and I was riding the line of the wood. The mare under me knew as much about driving cattle as I did, and between us we managed to keep the steers in the road; but finally a bullock broke away and plunged down into the deep wood. Abner called to me to turn all the cattle into the grove on the upper side of the road and let them rest in the shade while we got the runaway steer out of the under-brush. I turned the drove in among the open oak trees, left my mare to watch them and went on foot down through the underbrush. The long hill descending to the river was unfenced wood grown up with thickets. I was perhaps three hundred yards below the road when I lost sight of the steer, and got up on a stump to look.

  I did not see the steer, but in a thicket beyond me I saw a thing that caught my eye. The bushes had been cut out, the leaves trampled, and there was a dogwood fork driven into the ground. About fifty feet away there was a steep bank and below it a horse path ran through the wood.

  The thing savored of mystery. All round was a dense tangle of thicket, and here, hidden at a point commanding the horse path, was this cleared spot with the leaves trampled and the forked limb of a dogwood driven into the ground. I was so absorbed that I did not know that Abner had ridden down the hill behind me until I turned and saw him sitting there on his great chestnut gelding looking over the dense bushes into the thicket.

  He got down out of his saddle, parted the bushes carefully and entered the thicket. There was a hollow log lying beyond the dogwood fork. Abner put his hand into the log and drew out a gun. It was a bright, new, one-barreled fowling-piece—a muzzle-loader, for there were no breech-loaders in that country then. Abner turned the gun about and looked it over carefully. The gun was evidently loaded, because I could see the cap shining under the hammer. Abner opened the brass plate on the stock, but it contained only a bit of new tow and the implement, like a corkscrew, which fitted to the ramrod and held the tow when one wished to clean the gun. It was at this moment that I caught sight of the steer moving in the bushes and I leaped down and ran to head him off, leaving Abner standing with the gun in his hands.

  When I got the steer out and across the road into the drove Abner had come up out of the wood. He was in the saddle, his clenched hand lay on the pommel.

  I was afraid to ask Abner questions when he looked like that, but my curiosity overcame me.

  “What did you do with the gun, Uncle Abner?” “I put it back where it was,” he said. “Do you know who the owner is?”

  “I do not know who he is,” replied Abner without looking in my direction, “but I know what he is—he is a coward!”

  The afternoon drew on. The sun moved towards the far-off chain of mountains. Silence lay on the world. Only the tiny creatures of the air moved with the hum of a distant spinner, and the companies of yellow butterflies swarmed on the road. The cattle rested in the shade of the oak trees and we waited. Abner’s chestnut stood like a horse of bronze and I dozed in the saddle.

  Shadows were entering the world through the gaps and passes of the mountains when I heard a horse. I stood up in my stirrups and looked.

  The horse was traveling the path running through the wood below us. I could see the rider through the trees. He was a grazer whose lands lay westward beyond the wood. In the deep, utter silence I could hear the creak
of his saddle-leather. Then suddenly as he rode there was the roar of a gun, and a cloud of powder smoke blotted him out of sight.

  In that portentous instant of time I realized the meaning of the things that I had seen there in the thicket. It was an ambush to kill this man!

  The fork in the ground was to hold the gun-barrel so the assassin could not miss his mark.

  And with this understanding came an appalling sense of my Uncle Abner’s negligence. He must have known all this when he stood there in the thicket, and when he knew it, why had he left that gun there? Why had he put it back into its hiding-place? Why had he gone his way thus unconcernedly and left this assassin to accomplish his murder? Moreover, this man riding there through the wood was a man whom Abner knew. His house was the very house at which Abner expected to stop this night. We were on our way there!

  It was in one of those vast spaces of time that a second sometimes stretches over that I put these things together and jerked my head toward Abner, but he sat there without the tremor of a muscle.

  The next second I saw the frightened horse plunging in the path and I looked to see its saddle empty, or the rider reeling with the blood creeping through his coat, or some ghastly thing that clutched and swayed. But I did not see it. The rider sat firmly in his saddle, pulled up the horse, and, looking idly about him, rode on. He believed the gun had been fired by some hunter shooting squirrels. “Oh,” I cried, “he missed!”

  But Abner did not reply. He was standing in his stirrups searching the wood.

  “How could he miss, Uncle Abner,” I said, “when he was so near to the path and had that fork to rest his gun-barrel in? Did you see him?”

  It was some time before Abner answered, and then his reply was to my final query.

  “I did not see him,” he said deliberately. “He must have slipped away somehow through the thicket.”

  That was all he said, and for a good while he was silent, drumming with his fingers on the pommel of his saddle and looking out over the distant treetops.

  The sun was touching the mountains before Abner began to move the drove. We got the cattle out of the wood and started the line down the long hill. The road forked at the bottom of the hill—one branch of it, the main road, went on to the house of the grazer with whom we had expected to spend the night and the other turned on through the wood.